Flood Insurance, or why business continuity shouldn't be a bad phrase

Our office and my home are here in the Midwest, namely the Northwest Indiana region and it just about hit 60 degrees here yesterday in January!  This then lead to some major thunderstorms in the area and tornadoes a bit more North West on the Illinois/Wisconsin border.  Many roads were closed today and even more had a couple inches deep or water that made for a very time consuming commute.

 

The reason I mention this though, is who would have predicted major rain storms or tornadoes in the mid of winter?  With all of the odd weather it seems like such oddities as this are becoming the norm.  This means that we need to be prepared both personally and for our businesses.

 

What if your office flooded?  Would you lose precious paper files?  Would your computers and server survive? If you did have a loss, would you be able to open up again?  Do you have backups in place?  If you do have backups, do you keep them in your office too?

 

Even worse then just having water damage is having a fire in your facility.  Not only will you have the obvious fire damage, which would completely gut everything, but even a minor fire can lead to smoke and water damage.

 

Now is as good a time as any to prepare for the worst with a business continuity plan.  Notice I do not say disaster recovery, because you want to plan for more then just disasters.

 

I like to engage clients by asking a couple of questions:

 

• What would happen to your business if you died tomorrow? (Nothing like hitting close to home)
• Do you have backups of your important electronic files?  If so have you verified that you can recover data from the backups?  Do you keep a backup off site?
• What would happen if there was no loss, but you couldn't go to your office because of a snow storm or major flu outbreak?
• What if a thief breaks in and steals all of your computer equipment?  Do you have sensitive information that belongs to your customers and/or employees?

 

 

I will be writing in more depth about these topics in upcoming writings, however until then please be sure to check out the official US Government web site at www.ready.gov.